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Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Agoda Reveals First-Half 2025 Travel Insights: China, Malaysia, and South Korea Remain Top Visitors to Thailand
BANGKOK, July 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital travel platform Agoda reveals fresh insights into the Thai travel landscape for the first half of 2025. Based on booking data, China, Malaysia, and South Korea are once again the leading markets visiting Thailand, followed by Japan and Singapore. Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket continue to top the list of most-visited cities among the five leading markets. Hat Yai also emerged as one of the most visited cities, particularly among Malaysian and Singaporean travelers. Hat Yai's growing popularity is likely due to its reputation for affordability, having ranked as the cheapest destination in Thailand and among the top three in Asia for two consecutive years. These destinations offer a mix of urban adventure, coastal leisure, and rich cultural experiences that appeal to a broad spectrum of travelers. Unexpectedly, the market visiting Thailand the most isn't necessarily the one staying the longest. While China tops the list for visitor numbers, the longest average stays are led by South Korea, followed by Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and then China. Additionally, each market shows unique preferences for where visitors stay longer, with many choosing island escapes for extended visits, such as Ko Tao for its world-class diving, Ko Pha Ngan for its mix of laid-back beach life and well-known party scenes, and inland destinations like Pathum Thani for a quieter, more local experience near Bangkok. Markets Cities with the longest average length of stay China Ko Tao Malaysia Ko Pha ngan South Korea Pathum Thani Japan Ko Tao Singapore Ko Tao Alongside Agoda's data, official figures from Thailand's Ministry of Tourism and Sports reveal that more than 16 million foreign tourists visited Thailand from January to June 2025, generating approximately 743.5 million baht in tourism revenue. With ongoing government initiatives such as the Amazing Thailand Grand Tourism and Sports Year 2025, streamlined travel procedures, and increased flight capacities, Thailand continues to assert itself as a leading destination in the region. Meanwhile, for Thai travelers heading abroad, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul emerged as the leading destinations for the first half of 2025. Akaporn Rodkong, Country Director at Agoda shared, "We're honored to be the platform of choice for travelers from across Asia and proud to play a role in supporting tourism in Thailand. At Agoda, we're committed to offering convenient and diverse accommodation options that help travelers explore both well-known destinations and hidden gems across the country, making their trips easier and more memorable." With over 6 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities, Agoda offers endless possibilities for micro-travelers. Agoda's mobile app is the go-to platform for unbeatable deals for a quick getaway. Start planning your next micro-adventure at View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Agoda Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Melden Sie sich an, um Ihr Portfolio aufzurufen. Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
AnyCreek Acquires Origin to Continue Building the Outdoor Industry's Leading AI-Powered Vertical Software Platform
The combined platform now operates in all 50 states, supports thousands of outfitters and guides, and has powered over 1 million hours of guided outdoor experiences. MEMPHIS, Tenn., July 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- AnyCreek, the leading AI-powered booking and business management platform for guided outdoor experiences, announced today that it has acquired Origin ( the pioneering software company built to serve outfitters, guides, and outdoor business owners. The acquisition marks a major step forward in AnyCreek's mission to help outdoor businesses run smarter, easier, and more profitably. Together, AnyCreek and Origin form the most comprehensive AI-powered vertical SaaS platform in the outdoor category. With a combined presence in all 50 U.S. states, the platform supports thousands of guides and outfitters, and has facilitated more than 1 million hours of unforgettable outdoor experiences. "This acquisition represents a major milestone—not just for AnyCreek and Origin, but for the entire outdoor industry," said Benjamin Lazarov, CEO of AnyCreek. "We've admired what Alex and the Origin team have built: a powerful, guide-first product with deep relationships across mountain guiding, fishing, biking, watersports, and beyond. By bringing our companies together, we're accelerating our shared vision to build the software backbone for the world's best outdoor businesses." This acquisition cements AnyCreek's position as the one-stop solution for outdoor business owners. "Today, our platform is best-in-class for bookings, payments, calendars, permits and reporting, waivers, and guide management. But that's only the foundation. Our vision is for Origin and AnyCreek to become extensions of our customers' teams — helping outfitters not only run their operations, but also streamline marketing, manage insurance needs, support payroll, and unlock growth that was previously inaccessible to small businesses in this space." says Lazarov. Both AnyCreek and Origin will continue to operate independently in the immediate future to allow both brands to serve their existing customer bases with the same level of care and support they have come to expect, while leveraging shared resources to accelerate product innovation, customer success, and industry-wide impact. Alex Fletcher, Co-founder and former CEO of Origin, will remain involved as an advisor as the companies integrate. "Origin was founded to solve the complex operational challenges that guides and outfitters face every day," Fletcher said. "AnyCreek shares that same guide-first philosophy. The combined platform will give outdoor business owners access to an unmatched suite of tools, while keeping personal relationships and industry expertise at the core of everything we do." The acquisition has been met with enthusiasm by leaders across the outdoor industry. Claudia Morrisson, Partnerships Manager of the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA), commented: "The AMGA has long partnered with Origin and has seen the company grow with a deep understanding of the guiding profession. Their tools have been developed around the intricacies of the guiding industry, helping many businesses operate more efficiently. The acquisition by AnyCreek brings even more potential to develop innovative, guide-focused solutions. We're encouraged to see this level of investment and innovation supporting the growth, sustainability, and enablement of professional guiding." This announcement follows AnyCreek's $1.8 million seed round announced in June 2024. Today, leading outfitters across North America — from premier fly shops in Montana to highly regarded mountain schools in Colorado — trust AnyCreek and Origin to manage their businesses, connect with guests, and scale with confidence. To learn more about AnyCreek, visit To explore Origin's platform, visit Contact: Leor Reef leor@ 901.484.3802 View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE AnyCreek Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Times
20-07-2025
- Times
10 of the best tour operators
Whether turning up at a port to see the ferry melting over the horizon or thinking you're heading to an authentic Mexican cantina only to find a generic cocktail bar, a trip to a new place inevitably contains moments of disappointment. However, booking with the right operator can ensure you're spending your holiday budget, and more importantly time, in the way that feels most meaningful to you. More than doing the admin, offering on-the-ground knowledge and crafting thoughtful itineraries, they also offer a steady hand to hold when things go awry. From high-end adventures to budget-conscious journeys, these are the companies that go the extra mile so you can travel with confidence. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Jet2holidays is now the UK's largest tour operator and has won awards for its excellent service at reasonable prices. It refunded customers quickly during the pandemic, has promised not to apply surcharges this year and, unlike many fly-and-flop merchants, includes hold luggage in its headline prices. It has beach holidays in two to five-star hotels in 65 destinations across the Mediterranean, Canary Islands and other corners of Europe, from ten UK airports, as well as city breaks. Try this: Seven nights' all inclusive at the four-star Landmar Costa Los Gigantes in Tenerife on June 19 starts at £994pp, based on two adults sharing, including baggage allowance, flights and transfers. • Read our full guide to the world's best adventure holidays Inntravel was pioneering slow travel long before it became mainstream. It specialises in self-guided walking, cycling and cross-country snowshoeing holidays, which come with minutely detailed trip dossiers and work with a network of small, locally owned hotels and guesthouses. Many of its holidays are also designed with rail travel from London. Try this: Journey by Rail Along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Perfect for those who don't have the fitness or 30 days spare to do this section of the journey on foot, it includes stays in five cities en route including Burgos, where you'll find El Cid's tomb, and Monforte de Lemos, built around a fortress, which now houses a stunning parador where Inntravel customers stay. Nine nights' B&B and rail travel start from £1,105pp, based on two sharing. Jules Verne runs escorted tours and cruises worldwide, from Croatia to Cuba, and is great for solo travellers who aren't necessarily looking for trips especially for singles, but do want holidays that don't involve paying a swingeing supplement if they don't want to share a room. The group size on each tour is typically about 15 and nearly 40 per cent are travelling solo. More than half of its escorted tours have departures where no single supplement applies. Try this: The Golden Road to Samarkand escorted tour of Uzbekistan has no single supplements on selected dates as well as solo departures. Eleven nights' half board and flights starts at £2,495pp. Owned and managed by the same family for more than 50 years, this is your go-to for lesser-known/undiscovered Greece and its islands (Cyprus, Portugal and the Azores, Scandinavia and Latin America are also in its portfolio). Forget glitzy and soulless all-inclusives, it specialises in value-for-money small hotels and resorts as well as villas with pools and its holidays are brilliant for getting under the skin of a destination. Try this: The two-bedroom Anthilia Cottages in Sivota on Greece's Epirus coast are a ten-minute walk from the village and beaches and seven nights' self-catering costs from £709pp, including flights and transfers. A trip to Japan is top of many people's wishlist but to make the most of it you need a specialist tour operator with impeccable attention to detail. InsideJapan has this in spades, offering group tours and self-guided trips that come with an indispensable, personalised 'bible' of tips and advice. All of its team have have had years of experience living, working and travelling in Japan, and know all the best spots, whether you want to see cherry blossom or hunt down the best manga stores in Tokyo. Try this: The 14-night Gastronomic Adventure is a whistle-stop tour of all the best food and culture hotspots across Japan and starts at £3,060pp, based on two travelling and excluding flights. Trailfinders has specialised in round-the-world tickets and multi-city flights for more than 50 years and now provides everything from tropical fly-and-flops to city breaks and escorted tours; while it has an online presence, you have to ring to book and will always get a bespoke deal. It really came into its own during the pandemic because of its finance model: it ring-fences customers' money in a separate account, so could refund quickly. Try this: The Worldwide Explorer around-the-world package includes flights and five nights' accommodation (room only) on a route from London that includes Singapore, Sydney and San Francisco and starts at £1,379pp, based on two travelling. If you're keen to go green, Pura Aventura, a Brighton-based tour operator, is certified B Corp and tailor-makes holidays away from the crowds to Latin America, Spain and Portugal. It donates one per cent of its revenue to fund a rural reforestation development project in Nicaragua and carbon balances every holiday by 160 per cent (a mile for every kilometre travelled) so that customers can travel 'positive'. Try this: Classic Costa Rica Away From the Crowds swaps the tourist trail for lesser-known routes in Costa Rica and starts at £4,900pp, based on two sharing, including 17 nights' B&B, some meals, transfers and activities. If insider access is your thing, A&K, which specialises in top-notch hyper-bespoke holidays, operates on the 'it's not what you know but who you know' principle and has a bulging little black book. In business for more than 60 years, it's particularly strong on Africa, whether you want a super luxe small-boat Nile cruise or a private safari — but with 55 offices in 30 countries, its reach is worldwide. Try this: A&K's Cultural Treasures: Around the World by Private Jet departs on May 6 and includes everywhere from the Taj Mahal and Abu Dhabi's modern wonders to a Sicilian wedding party and the Bhutan's tshechu festival. It costs £120,800pp. A key marker of Kuoni's reliability is that honeymoons and special occasions make up a quarter of its business; it's also strong on family holidays. All of its trips are tailor-made and it was one of the best travel companies for refunds during the pandemic. It sells holidays worldwide, including a strong European programme ranging from Malta to Montenegro, and while it's premium, it's not all top end — there's now a broader range of resorts in the Maldives, for example. It's hot on sustainability, fair employment rights and animal welfare (elephant rides have been removed entirely from its tours), and a big plus for those who'd rather chat in depth about their trip face-to-face is that it has 30 stores across the UK. Try this: Kandolhu is a tiny idyll in the Maldives that's exclusive to Kuoni. Seven nights' all-inclusive, plus flights and transfers, starts at £3,899pp. An expert in highly personalised, tailor-made private tours, Audley offers trips to more than 80 destinations. Its USP is a team of specialists who've all travelled extensively in their regions, returning each year, so they can curate trips that are out of the ordinary. You can expect the best local guides and stays in interesting hotels, homestays and lodges. Try this: An eight-night Highlights of Canada's west self-drive trip, with bear, moose and elk spotting in Banff and Jasper National Parks, starts at £2,645pp, including flights, stays in hotels and B&Bs, and car hire. • Best tours for families• Best group tours for solo travellers• Best tours for couples Additional reporting by Hannah Summers and Imogen Lepere
Skift
16-07-2025
- Business
- Skift
How Next-Gen Attendees are Reshaping Event Tech
Planners need to rethink how they use technology in every aspect of their meetings, or they risk losing the attention of the biggest percentage of their attendees — Millennials and Gen Zers. Planners are rethinking every aspect of meeting tech, from registration to reservations, apps to entertainment, with their younger attendees in mind. The evolution of these 7 technologies is transforming planners' jobs and their meetings. Registration Tech If there's anything that will turn off a younger attendee, it's a glitchy online registration system, or, once they arrive at the meeting, waiting in a long queue for no apparent reason. Improved registration technology has simplified the process. On site, self-registration or tablet tables allow staff to take on a more passive role as attendees sign themselves in. All that's needed is a fast badge-printing system and a single station for badge and material pick-up, such as lanyards and ribbons. This transforms registration from a painful experience into an opportunity to engage with other people and start the event on a positive note. Travel Booking It used to be considered a privilege by incentive winners to have their flights booked for them, concierge-style. Not so for the younger generations: They prefer to have a travel voucher they can use to book their flights on their own, on whichever app and airline they choose. They also want control of their reservations so they can extend their trips and work remotely in that beautiful incentive destination, rather than jetting straight home. Audience Polling The idea of a session where people are talked down to by the person on stage is a yawn for younger audiences. 'They don't want to see people like us talking to you. They actually want to be involved in the conversation,' Sherrif Karamat, CEO of PCMA and CEMA, told the audience at last year's Skift Meetings Forum. A growing number of events are using live polling to encourage audience participation. The key to successful polling is to form questions that will intrigue your attendees, make the instructions very clear so that your attendees know what they are supposed to do, and allow them enough time to think before voting. Commenting on the results creates a dialog between the speaker and the audience. In addition to encouraging participation, polling questions can help planners quickly understand how their content is resonating and make real-time adjustments. Facial Recognition Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are everywhere these days, including in conference rooms. Some are being used to recognize and track attendees (known as facial recognition), while others are analyzing the entire group to measure their engagement in the sessions. While there used to be more objections to this technology, it is generally accepted among younger attendees. However, it is still important to let people know ahead of time that you are using the technology, to ward off any liability from a privacy or security perspective. Gamification Younger generations have grown up with gaming consoles in their living rooms. Gamification activates the desire to achieve something and be recognized for it. It also touches on the need for 'status' among peers and gives attendees a new challenge. All of these are something younger attendees know well. So it's a natural to include gaming in meetings to get attendees to partake in activities they may not otherwise be inclined to do, like visiting a booth on the far end of an exhibit hall or connecting with new people they have not met before. Interactive Entertainment Younger attendees have also grown up in the world of immersive art events like Artechouse and Superblue, and even viewed the masters like Van Gogh and Monet electronically. Immersive experiences like Meow Wolf, which blends art, storytelling, and technology as visitors explore new worlds, have shaped their view of entertainment. Meetings can also wow attendees by using projection mapping, which transforms everyday objects like walls, buildings, and stages into dynamic, immersive displays. Whether it is subtle lighting effects or massive 3D video installations, projection mapping creates the same effect as these other immersive entertainment experiences — just at a meeting. AI A recent McKinsey survey found that Millennials are the most active generation of gen AI users. Some 62%t of employees aged 35 to 44 report high levels of expertise, compared with half of 18- to 24-year-old Gen Zers and 22% of Baby Boomers over 65. For Ginger Taylor, assistant director-leadership at Leadhership CORRECT Network for Women at Arc, AI is a kickstarter — the first step in her creative process. ChatGPT has become one of her go-to tools. 'I'm completely self-taught. I didn't take a course or follow a step-by-step manual. I just started using it, learned as I went, and I'm still learning. That's the beauty of it. 'I use ChatGPT to spark creativity, to help me think through challenges, and to kickstart the planning process,' she said. 'It helps me uncover angles I might not have considered on my own. 'For me, ChatGPT is part of the bigger process: strategy, research, innovation, creativity, and leadership. It doesn't replace the work, it enhances it.'
Irish Times
16-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Ryanair's booking practices ‘an absolute disgrace', says District Court judge
A District Court judge has labelled Ryanair's booking practices 'an absolute disgrace' in a small claims case taken by a woman who was seeking €950 from the airline. On January 9th, Katie Graham booked return flights through the Ryanair app for her family to visit Turin, Italy, for a week-long skiing holiday in February. She received a reservation number, a prompt to check in for the flight and instructions to get to the airport. 'I genuinely thought everything was okay. There were only three weeks between booking the flights and leaving for the holiday and I was very busy. I did not check back into anything until the day before when I went to check in and an error message saying 'Oops, there's a problem with your booking' came up,' Ms Graham said. READ MORE She drove to the airport with her husband at 11pm for the departure and tried to check in at the Ryanair desk. They told her that her booking was not successful and the flight to Turin was now full. 'We had a hotel booked, a car booked. The kids' bags were packed. We were travelling with another family. It was an absolute nightmare,' she said. Graham and her husband found an alternative: to fly to Milan, then drive to Turin, at a cost of €1,301.98. 'It did put a strain on the holiday, but we got on with it', she told the court at Balbriggan, Co Dublin. Ms Graham said when she went to book the Turin flight in January she did not receive a pop-up message to say her payment had been denied and that as such her booking was not complete. She told the court she wanted €950 for the cost of the Milan flights – which she said she booked arising from Ryanair's error – to be returned to her. Counsel for Ryanair said 'ordinarily' a pop-up message would appear when the payment failed. However, the defence could not 'definitively' say if there had been a technical error when Ms Graham was booking her flights. Judge Stephanie Coggans noticed the 'complete imbalance of power' between Ryanair and the claimant. She said her job was to 'ensure as level a playing field as possible' in these matters. It seemed reasonable to the judge that Ms Graham believed she had booked the Turin flights. She said Ms Graham's claim 'absolutely succeeds on the basis of not receiving the error message'. However, a technical issue with Ms Graham's banking app that had required her to use a family member's card instead to book the flights to Milan meant the judge could not grant the relief sought as it was not Ms Graham's bank account in question. 'I want to do it, but I can't', Judge Coggans said. Although Ms Graham said she was 'quite disappointed', she said the court was 'really well run' and admired the judge's attitude towards claimants. In a separate hearing, passengers Joanna and Keith Troughton argued they should have received a last call when waiting at the gate in Dublin Airport to board their morning flight to London. They were unaware of the boarding process and missed their Ryanair flight, costing them an extra €300 to buy new flights later that morning. While again the judge disapproved of the way Ryanair had dealt with their complaint, she said the claimants should have double checked the flight was boarding at the gate. 'Something I see in the paperwork is Ryanair constantly using forceful methods of enforcement,' she said. Speaking to the airline's counsel, the judge said: 'It wouldn't kill [Ryanair] to be halfway polite to people.'
